Thursday, December 15, 2011

TED Books Releases a Special Holiday Gift: "Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act"

 

Based on his popular TED Talk, Ron Gutman reviews more than 200 years of fascinating research on smiling and shares tips on how to give the gift of smiling to everyone you love.

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Just in time for the holidays, TED Books has released Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act, a short eBook exploring the science and magic behind this seemingly simple, yet transformative act. Smile was selected as a Kindle Single, and is also featured on iPad and Nook.

Weaving together respected science, history, and anecdotes collected in social media research, and in academic studies from around the world, Ron Gutman reveals how smiling more can produce surprising benefits for you and for others around you. Looking to smile more? The book also provides useful and effective tips to bring more smiles into your life (and into the lives of others around you).

"Exploring both the 'hows' and the 'whys' of smiling, I dove deeply into the intricacies of neuroscience and biology to unveil the mechanics of how smiling works," said Ron Gutman, author and health expert. "From there, I embarked on a fascinating journey of current scientific research in psychology, sociology and anthropology to discover why we smile and to reveal the role smiling plays in our daily lives. In my new TED Book Smile, I share my findings together with personal stories from my travels around the world for humanitarian work, business, and fun, to illuminate the global, multicultural, and universal roles that smiles play in our personal lives, and around the world."

A compelling and joyful read, the book is a perfect combination of the serious and the light. Smile is Ideal both for those who want to know more about the science behind smiling, and also for those who just want to learn more about how smiling can transform their lives for the better.

Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act is a Kindle Single, one of a handful of select top books that Amazon describes as "the highest-quality work we can find, and at a length best suited to the ideas they present." As part of the TED Books series, it's informative and compelling, but also can be read quickly, even in a single sitting.

The book is available for $2.99 through Amazon.com, iTunes and barnesandnoble.com, for the Kindle, the iPad, iPhone, the Nook, and for all computers with free Kindle Reader software.

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Story ideas:

Give the Gift of Smiling
Giving the gift of smiling this holiday season is very affordable (only $2.99) and includes free electronic delivery to anyone on your list who has a Kindle, iPad, a Nook, or the free Kindle Reader software available for computers and tablets. The new TED Book Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act, explores fascinating research and personal anecdotes from around the world showing the unbelievable benefits that smiling can provide to you and to others.

The Amazing Powers of Smiling Revealed in New TED eBook
The new TED Book Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act, explores research from around the world showing the astonishing and positive powers that smiles can have on yourself and on others. Smiles have been shown to improve the quality of marriages, increase the overall sense of well-being throughout life, improve our love lives, and even help us make more money. But most importantly, smiles can make you feel great and help others feel great as well. They trigger emotions and pleasure in the brain in ways that are even the best holiday deserts and chocolate can't reproduce. To learn more about how and why this simple act can make such a big difference, read or gift Smile this holiday season and new year. The eBook is available for $2.99 for Kindle, iPad, the Nook and for all computers with free Kindle Reader software.

The Top Ten Most Amazing Facts about Smiling
Smiling expert and personal health expert Ron Gutman shares and amazing review of studies and anecdotes from around the world that reveal some surprising facts about smiling and the incredible impact that smiles have on us and others. Of the many amazing facts collected from the many studies cited, here are ten amazing ones:

  1. Smiles aren't just a response to feeling good, they can actually make you feel good
  2. Smiles can predict success in marriage
  3. Frequent smilers report greater well-being throughout life
  4. Smiling not only makes you look more friendly, it actually makes you look more competent
  5. Smiles hold the same meanings in cultures around the world, even for cannibals :)
  6. Smiling can help you live longer
  7. Smiling is as stimulating to our brain as eating up to 2,000 bars of chocolate
  8. Smiling can help connect with others quickly
  9. Smiling is evolutionary contagious
  10. We're actually born smiling

Smiling activates the emotional processing centers of our brains and produces real, tangible pleasure that we can experience and enjoy. When we smile we don't only feel good, but we also look good to others around us. We're perceived to be more friendly, sociable, trustworthy, and even more competent. When others see us smiling, they see us in a better light, and they instinctively and instantaneously mimic our smiles. This smile activates the emotional processing centers of their brains and makes them feel better. It also strengthens our connection to them and improves our social interactions.

Ron Gutman. Smile

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About Ron Gutman
Ron Gutman is the founder & CEO of HealthTap (
www.healthtap.com), the leading Interactive Health company that's transforming the way people and physicians find, share and use personalized health information. Previously, Ron was the founder and CEO the leading online consumer health 2.0 company that developed the world's largest community of health writers and became one of the largest health sites on the Internet serving more than 100 million people all over the world. In health and technology, Ron is also an angel investor and advisor (Rock Health, Harvard's SMArt Initiative), a frequent speaker (TED, Medicine 2.0, South by Southwest, Health 2.0, Health FoO, and more…), and a published thought-leader (Forbes, Huffington Post). Ron also serves as Curator of TEDx Silicon Valley.

About TED and TED Books
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading." The annual TED Conferences in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). On
TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and its partners available to the world for free. More than 1,000 TEDTalks are now available online, with more being added each week. All of the talks are subtitled in English, and many are subtitled in various other languages.

TED Books is an imprint of short nonfiction works designed for digital distribution. Shorter than traditional books, TED Books run fewer than 20,000 words each – long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting. TED Books are available via Amazon.com, Apple's iBookstore, Barnes and Noble online and are compatible with Kindle, Nook and iBook platforms. They can be purchased for US$2.99 each. More information at: www.ted.com/pages/tedbooks.

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